The Dog Whistle and Me
You would think that we had become used to the hypocrisy of the current regime. But then, something new happens and you realise that it can get worse.
If you are sad enough to be a faithful follower of the career of Ms Fiaz, you will recall the following quote from an article in the HuffPost.
The article was written during the internal Labour Party campaign to select a candidate for the forthcoming mayoral election, the two candidates were Wales and Fiaz.
We have noted elsewhere that her indignation at Wales’ suggestion that members had been signed up from one community in order to bolster her vote did not stop her demanding that the party investigate East Ham CLP immediately after her election. They found hundreds of “members” incorrectly paying reduced rates, living outside of the borough or registered to vote at an address where they did not live. The Labour Party chose not to publish the results, though of course several of the key findings were leaked.
It seems that Wales’ “dog whistle” comments were rather more well founded than she would have us believe.
Given her antipathy to “disgusting” community politics it came as a surprise, even to us, that she posted a new statement recently.
As readers will note, she has been haemorrhaging votes in her base from the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. Indeed, they were at the heart of one of the campaigns to remove the mayoralty altogether.
She clearly has a problem.
Her promises to shop keepers on Green St and High St North have not been delivered and she is blamed for making their situation worse. The new parking tax has offended many of her erstwhile supporters in the south Asian community. We saw a 22% swing against Labour to the Tories in a ward with a significant majority of South Asian voters. And some of her erstwhile strongest supporters in East Ham Momentum have now become her strongest opponents.
It is not a problem so much for the Labour Party which can easily weather a few by election squalls. It is a problem for her personally. There are Labour members, admittedly largely those who are already fed up with her, who see her as the reason Newham voters will choose to place their cross in a different box or not vote at all. If her internal opposition feels this way it can be only a matter of time before her supporters on the council begin to worry about their prospects.
A 22% swing against Labour across the borough is frankly unlikely. Large swings in particular wards is a different matter. You can be assured that there have been councillors calculating their odds and pondering whether this is the time to seek an alternative seat.
Fiaz needs to reconnect with her base. But even we were surprised at the way she has attempted to do this.
Instead of addressing the problems that she got herself into, she has decided to use her own “dog whistle”. She might have failed to deliver on her promises. She may have turned on former supporters. She may have introduced new car taxes. But she is for the Palestinians!